Professors Predict Tight Race

Four top academics offered contrasting predictions on the outcome of the upcoming midterm elections at a pre-election panel sponsored by the Center for American Political Studies on Friday.

Two political scientists on the panel—titled “What Will Happen in the 2010 Elections?”—argued that November’s contests would be much closer than widely anticipated.

“This is going to be a tight election,” said Stephen D. Ansolabehere, a government professor at Harvard.

During the two hour panel discussion, Ansolabehere presented statistical data to back up his claim, arguing that the American public is more evenly divided on major policy issues than is commonly believed.

Ansolabehere also downplayed the influence of the Tea Party. “The media has made this bigger than it actually is,” he said.

Morris P. Fiorina, a professor of political science at Stanford University, echoed Ansolabehere’s doubts about the potential for a blowout victory for the Republican Party.

“I’m skeptical about notions of big losses,” he said.

However, Fiorina said he thinks the Democratic Party would suffer some losses because of missteps made during the past two years.

He pointed to the party’s “political overambition” on issues such as heath care reform.

The Obama administration’s decision to pursue health care reform was based on a presumed and mistaken “mandate” from the public, he said. “The American people don’t give mandates,” he said.

While both Fiorina and Ansolabehere said that the Democratic Party’s potential losses had been overstated, Ansolabehere said that some losses would be inevitable due to the “restoring” nature of the election.

He said that dissatisfaction with the Bush administration and enthusiasm about Barack Obama led to unexpected Democratic victories in traditionally Republican districts in 2008.

“The feeling [in 2008] was that the Democrats were going to lose 25 seats off the top [this year],” he said.

Meanwhile Professor of Government and Sociology Theda R. Skocpol said that discussion should not focus on the number of seats lost or gained by each party this year.

“What’s interesting here is not margins. Deadlock is going to deepen after this election, and that’s what matters,” she said. “There will be almost no compromises until we find out what happens in 2012.”

Thomas B. Edsall, a professor of journalism at Columbia, analyzed the socioeconomic differences that would play into the election.

Ryan D. Enos, an assistant professor of government at Harvard, attended the panel discussion and said he saw it as a way to make predictions about the election in a scientific way.

“There is a lot of folk wisdom going around about what’s going to happen,” he said. “But in panels like this...you have people looking at data who can provide more nuance than the popular narrative.”